A few months ago I got my Coinbase Shift card. This is a debit card that lets me spend out of my coinbase bitcoin wallet as if it were cash.
I was so excited when I got it. It felt like a great way to participate directly in the cryptocurrency economy and like one step closer to a fiat-free life. I even filmed my first time buying coffee with bitcoin!
However, if I am being honest - I barely use my Shift card anymore because the fees associated with bitcoin are way too high.
Fees Fees Fees
I want to avoid fees. You probably feel the same way. It’s a pain in the ass to pay a fee just so that I can send my own money from one place to another.
I earn most of my cryptocurrency as steem. If I want to spend my cryptocurrency, I have to send it over to my bitcoin wallet. But that costs upward of $6! Talk about fees…
It’s a real bummer. I am a low income individual for now and I would generally only have $100 in a day-to-day spending wallet. That means if I want to transfer $100 of BTC into my coinbase wallet, I have to give up $6 of it in fees.
In contrast, if I sell my BTC for cash (Coinbase —> PayPal), I’ll only spend about $3 in fees for that same $100. Half as many fees.
As Long as It’s a Pain In The Ass to Spend Bitcoin, I won’t
I want to spend bitcoin. In the long run, I’d love to spend steem directly for my needs - groceries, transportation, rent, etc. You could call be the exact target customer for cryptocurrency spending options.
However right now, any kind of cryptocurrency spending is difficult. Maybe not for John McAfee…
…but not all of us are spending thousands of dollars of bitcoin each week :-).
As a side note, I can definitely see the argument from people who support BitcoinCash right now, in that it would be really nice to have lower fees and faster transactions.
At least it is not so big of a deal to exchange my steem for cash before I buy things. Cryptocurrency is making huge strides, so I expect that better payment options will come into play soon enough.
Do you spend your Bitcoin regularly? How?
Fees are too high but that is due to supply and demand. Many addresses are few locked. I have had a stuck transaction for over a week now as the wallet selected too low a fee. It’s never happened to me before. I’m not even sure if it remains pending till it goes through or whether it times out, allowing me to select a higher fee. At present it’s just stuck.
Ugh that is the stuff that needs to stop happening before cryptocurrency will become a viable mainstream option for spending/receiving money. It should be as simple as swiping a debit card with USD, or handing over a few bucks in cash.
Yeah, currently we don't seem to have a great system in place for spending crypto. It kind of just seems like a novelty to me at the moment. However, I'm optimistic that the process will get better and better as time moves forward. Eventually, crypto in general will hit its true market cap and the price will plateau and stabilize. When that happens there won't be so much volatility so it will be easier to spend crypto. In that time the transaction process should only get better. That's my opinion anyway.
Regardless though, every time you spend bitcoin of any other crypto, you bring awareness to the general population. Even little encounters make a difference and add to the potential for mainstream adoption
How long do you think it will be before cryptocurrency in general hits its true market cap?
That I have no idea. My guess is it will take quite some time for that, 5-10 years maybe? Who knows? We can only speculate really.
But basically, there can't be infinite growth in anything. Crypto at the moment is essentially pulling money out of other sources (fiat, stocks, commodities..etc). The Bitcoin "store of value theory" explains this quite well. It basically suggests that the economy is moving money out of gold and into Bitcoin so the two commodities over time will eventually trade places in terms of value. That's a simplified explanation of course - fiat and stock money is also going into the crypto at the moment as well. But you get the idea.
In crypto in general you can see this principle at work. A bunch of money gets poured into a specific coin and the price rises. Then overtime the "crowd" moves on to the next "hot" token and the price of the original token drops and the price of the new token increases. Money jumps from coin to coin as market cap moves around.
Eventually the growth will slow down though and volatility levels should theoretically drop significantly - at least to a level more like stocks in the stock market. Future stability would be a good thing in my opinion. It would make the tokens more usable. People now are mostly only holding their tokens as an investment. They are taking advantage of the massive gains rather then using them for their intended purpose. As crypto becomes more regulated though it may also become more stable.
I completely agree with you about all of that, 5-10 years sounds right for the major volitality to reduce somewhat... could be many decades before we really see what the mature cryptocurrency market will look like
Yeah I agree. We may be a long time out. Crypto is like the wild west at the moment lol
I can't see too many people spending bitcoin with these fees and it can also take a while for the transaction to go through. Your coffee would be cold by then. Steem would be better if we can persuade people to accept it.
Steem would be night-and-day better. With steem there is no need to use the coinbase trick of "converting" it into USD (which just means Coinbase buys the bitcoin from you)... I could literally send the coffee shop 1 steem and that would be worth about one coffee right now. And it would take 3 seconds.
We'll get there... eventually. lol
Don't worry Matt, there are sooooo many cryptocurrencies that offer speed an scalability. You can get Litecoin (still moves faster and cheaper), BCH (yuck), Dash (very very fast) with much more to come. All card companies that use crypto will enable adoption of most of them soon if not already.
why is BCH yuck?
I don't mind the forks in general. Let the market decide. Competition is good. But some of the people behind BCH... man... those cold reptilian eyes ... corporate predators ...
Hmm... I need to do more research on the entire BTC vs BCH thing. Will keep your thoughts in mind as I do
you can start here:
I just have a small amount of bitcoin as an investment. I put most of my investment in Litecoin. I don't know how many coffe shops accepting Litecoin though :)
I think its possible to get a debit card that is powered by Litecoin. This is something I have been thinking about lately as a matter of fact
That would be perfect right about now! I just may have to track down one of those.
Sounds awsome, I guess it's not long before we only use cryptos. At least I hope :)
I use BitPay and Coinbase and sell to PayPal and I have a debit card for PayPal.. I haven’t figured out yet who has the lower fees.. but there are other options .. eth to Coinbase is a shitload cheaper
You and I have a similar system, I also use Coinbase + PayPal and the PayPal card. I also have the Coinbase "Shift Card" which is nice. The only bad part is transferring my funds into bitcoin, also I do worry about capital gains tax issues down the road.
ETH and/or LTC are def the move for selling to PayPal - like you said, its a shitload cheaper.
Have you tried Gyft?
Works for me for years no problems.
No to be honest this is the first time I am hearing about it. What is it?
Its a service and App that allows you to buy everyday digital/mobile giftcards to numerous retail/franchise outlets for use mostly in the US which you can pay with CC, PayPal, and BTC.
Ah cool! Thanks for the heads up
The head bitcoin gangster magicians doing some real bad voodoo (segwit), not increasing the block size and honestly turning bitcoin more and more into a shitcoin day by day.
Thank god the cash is moving into the altcoins.
The only question is... will the cash remain in the altcoins?
I belive so, at least until january or february. When I believe this will all come crashing, to wait for a time when cryptos have real widespread use. Only then will we see the real "moon".
bitUSD/bitEUR from Bitshares is the solution no? It's fast, low (fixed) fees and non volatile. ... And credit cards are coming (see OCASH)
Might be, I like Bitshares a lot from what Ive seen so far.
Agree. $6 for $100 transaction fee is ridiculous. After all, it is your own money.
I think Steem is better transaction wise.
We should promote this project so it could gain more traction and achieve its potential.
Bitcoin is having a lot of issues the only reason justifying its position is because it was the first.
We are promoting it!!
Bitcoin is the foundation and is meant for savings. :) Spend Alts...
I gotta get a debit card that I can load up with alts.
Those are crazy fees and transaction times. I would like to know a system for going to a debit card without going through Bitcoin. These days, it seems just too much of a skimming system for no advantage. I'm looking forward to Steem or BTS being used on a debit card!